iCloud Migration Kills MobileMe Sync For Keychains, Widgets and More

Apple released iOS 5 Beta 5 over the weekend, along with a handful of related bits and pieces, including the ability for developers to migrate their MobileMe accounts to the forthcoming iCloud right now -- which has uncovered some unpleasant news for those who use some of the more obscure sync features in MobileMe.

AppleInsider is reporting that developers taking advantage of Apple’s offer to move their MobileMe account to iCloud have found out that it will be a bit of the old “good news/bad news” scenario when consumers finally get to do the same this fall. Despite CEO Steve Jobs’ claims that “the truth is in the cloud,” in reality MobileMe users will be missing some of the features they may have come to depend on all these years.

While Mail, Contacts and Calendars will move from MobileMe to iCloud just fine, other more obscure sync items will be left behind -- including the syncing of Dashboard widgets, Dock items, keychains and Mail rules, signatures and Smart Mailboxes between Mac computers. Apple hasn’t explained why these sync features will be MIA through iCloud, but presumably the company is trying to streamline its newly free offering to focus on features specific to iOS as well as Mac.

“These MobileMe features will not be available,” an ominous-sounding web page proclaims during the migration process. “You will no longer be able to sync Mac Dashboard Widgets, Dock Items, Keychains, Mail Accounts, Rules, Signatures, Smart Mailboxes and Preferences after moving to iCloud.”

On the good news front, the migration to iCloud doesn’t affect MobileMe Gallery, iDisk or iWeb publishing -- at least not until MobileMe finally goes dark on June 30, 2012. For the time being, users will still have access to their services at Me.com even after moving to iCloud.

And more potentially good news: MacRumors reports that MobileMe users will also get to keep their 20GB storage after migration, meaning they’ll have 25GB total after adding the 5GB free from iCloud itself. However, it appears this bonus is also temporary and will go away with MobileMe on June 30, 2012.

For now, iCloud migration is only possible for developers, which requires not only iOS 5 Beta 5 but also Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 Seed and iCloud for OS X Lion Beta 6 (Windows users also need a separate iCloud Control Panel for Windows Beta 4) -- Apple requires developers to confirm all the necessary pieces are in place before they’re allowed to migrate. But fear not, we’ll all get to join the party soon enough.